Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Last year I purchased an HP TouchSmart Tx2-1020us Notebook PC, as I'm a fan of the convertible Tablet PC form factor. As someone with a strong interest in digital imaging, I found the touch-screen capabilities intriguring."Intriguing." It's a suitable word choice, considering the reason I'm sending this message.To be blunt, the "Duo Sense" digitizer from N-trig that, theoretically, makes the touch experience possible, is absolutely terrible.From the start, I've been plagued with issues such as "phantom clicks," or a failure to differentiate between finger and pen touches, to the point that finger input had to be disabled.Recently, I performed a fresh install of Windows, for a variety of reasons, and afterwards I upgraded to the latest drivers in the vain hope that this would address the issues.In short, it did not. If anything, this exacerbated the issue.None of the "fixes" promised in the new drivers were delivered, and just getting them to install was a Herculean - or perhaps Sisyphean would be more apt - task.The touch features will periodically stop working, Windows will fail to recognize the device, and the firmware for the digitizer will disappear entirely.In looking online I've found that I'm hardly the only person facing this problem.As my warranty has expired, I do not expect any sort of technical support for this issue, and I don't want you to view this as a complaint against HP. Touch issues aside, I'm very pleased with the notebook's performance. I've purchased other HP products in the past - indeed, my secondary desktop is a Slimline Pavilion - and will likely do so again.I simply wanted to state my extreme displeasure with N-trig, and to encourage you to seriously reconsider partnering with them in the future.And, indeed, touch is clearly the way of the future, and I would hate for HP to get left behind due to the shoddy quality of N-trig products.